X-rated 'children's' books outrage students' parents

Titles on required-reading lists, offerings in libraries include bestiality, sex drawings

Parents across the nation are taking action against both school districts and libraries that feature books, some of them required reading, that include sexual issues and obscenity many believe are inappropriate for school children.

In Overland Park, Kan., parents have organized to protest the inclusion of obscene books on children's assigned reading lists in the Blue Valley School District. The parents took action after a few of them researched the books kids were being asked to read.

"[My son] is a 14-year-old freshman boy, and [the book] had references to oral sex and homosexuality. … I thought it was a mistake!" Janet Harmon, one of the Blue Valley parents, told activist group Concerned Women for America.

The Kansas parents eventually started a website, Classkc.org, designed to inform parents about the contents of their children's reading material and about how to get involved to make changes.

The site includes pages with explicit examples of narrative bestiality and oral sex, citing the school board-approved books from which the excerpts come.

Says Classkc.org: "The state should not have open season on when, where and how to indoctrinate and form children's sexual attitudes, but rather … the parents should have the primary role in values education and overall worldview, particularly in the area of sexual values, for their own children."

The site lists books on the high-school reading list along with their level of reading score as determined by the Lexile grade-level system.

Books assigned to 11th and 12th grade Blue Valley students, such as "Song of Solomon" (not the biblical book) and "Beloved," are given fifth and sixth grade levels of difficulty by the Lexile system.

"The books, therefore, are not only vulgar but provide little intellectual challenge for high-school students," Concerned Women for America points out.

"Beloved," by Toni Morrison, was assigned to 12th-graders but has a sixth-grade reading level.

"'Beloved' contains oral sex, incest, rape, pedophilia, graphic sex, extreme violence, sexual abuse, physical/emotional abuse, infanticide, and an extensive amount of profanity," states the classkc.org website. "The first two chapters contain five references to sex with cows in addition to other types of sex."

The Kansas parents wonder why classics such as Charles Dickens' "David Copperfield" and Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" don't top the reading list.

Elsewhere, parents have battled public libraries, which are increasingly stocking so-called young-adult novels that include vulgarity and overt sexuality.

Said a Texas homeschooling grandmother who contacted WND: "The 'Young Adult Novel' is a growing genre in 'literature.' The problem is, the books are foul and vile, filled with sexuality, homosexuality, terrible profanity and various other kinds of perversity. And the American Library Association works hard at keeping them available to our children. Any attempt to remove any of these books is labeled censorship by the ALA. They fight tooth and nail."

A website sponsored by Parents Against Bad Books in School includes an extensive list of typical young-adult novels along with obscene excerpts from each one.

Stated PABBIS in a recent statement about the American Library Association: "The un-American ALA has taken the American constitutional right of freedom of speech and has perverted it into their right to push graphic and explicit smut on children. ALA and ALA affiliate brown boot bullies are constantly working to implement their weird social Marxist agenda. What started, purportedly, as a professional union-like organization for librarians has morphed into a powerful, dangerous, leftist, extremist organization."

"The ALA believes 'anything goes at any age' and that there is no difference between children and adults," continued PABBIS. "ALA and ALA affiliates decide what books your children should read. They push smut in both public and school libraries. They decide what is read in English class. Their vision of what is best for your child doesn't include traditional classic literature. Smut-filled, 'culturally diverse,' easy-reading books are being pushed instead."

The ALA's "Freedom to Read Statement" says: "The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack. Private groups and public authorities in various parts of the country are working to remove or limit access to reading materials, to censor content in schools, to label 'controversial' views, to distribute lists of 'objectionable' books or authors, and to purge libraries. These actions apparently rise from a view that our national tradition of free expression is no longer valid; that censorship and suppression are needed to counter threats to safety or national security, as well as to avoid the subversion of politics and the corruption of morals. …"

The organization believes "ordinary individual, by exercising critical judgment, will select the good and reject the bad." Each year it sponsors "Banned Books Week" to highlight attempts by Americans to challenge the inclusion of controversial books in school and neighborhood libraries.

The AFA stated last week that the most challenged book across the nation in 2005 was "It's Perfectly Normal," by Robie H. Harris, which is designed for children from the third to sixth grade and includes drawings of people having sex, a woman examining her genitals with a mirror and a teenage boy masturbating.

Last year, parents in Fayetteville, Ark., waged a protest against "It's Perfectly Normal." The school board initially removed the book and several others deemed objectionable to a parents-only section of the school library, but later returned them to the general circulation area.